A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
America’s top 50 philanthropists gave a whopping $22.4 billion to charity in 2025, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s latest annual ranking. Media titan Michael Bloomberg led the Philanthropy 50 for the third year in a row, donating $4.3 billion to support the arts, public health and other causes.
Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott is notably absent from the ranking. Scott announced on her blog in early December that she had given away nearly $7.2 billion to about 225 organizations over the past 12 months. She has donated more than $26 billion to nonprofits since 2020, according to a website for her philanthropic organization, Yield Giving.
Maria Di Mento, senior editor at the Chronicle, told Inside Wealth that Scott was excluded because her representatives declined to confirm how much she had contributed to her donor-advised funds, which are popular financial vehicles for charitable giving. The Philanthropy 50 counts donations to donor-advised funds, or DAFs, and foundations, but it doesn’t include disbursements from those funds in order to avoid double counting, Di Mento said.
